The present invention relates to a 3D printed transmission line assembly and, more specifically, to a 3D printed radio frequency (RF) transmission line assembly.
High RF loss from conventional transmission lines, such as microstrip transmission lines, striplines and coplanar waveguide (CPW) transmission lines, leads to limits on RF power that can be transmitted along conventional transmission lines. This is especially true for those transmission lines used for the transmission of high frequency signals. Due to the RF losses, conventional transmission lines must be spaced relatively far apart to ensure RF isolation from one line to another. This spacing requirement results in RF crossover assemblies requiring expensive, multilayer boards.
With the above in mind, it is seen that large scale broadband performance is often limited by the use of conventional transmission lines. As an attempt to address the problems associated with conventional transmission lines, a polystrata process was proposed and demonstrated high-isolation RF crossovers with very low loss. However, since the process relies upon subtractive manufacturing with many operational steps, the process is prohibitively expensive and difficult to integrate into some RF products.